Ology of the Month - Out of the Clouds

Even after this year’s gorgeous summer weather, autumn still has to be my favourite time of year. I love all the colours of the leaves and the feel of autumn. It’s the season of the Nottingham Goose Fair, Hallowe’en, Guy Fawkes Night and bonfires.

The change in the seasons gives me the inspiration for this month’s Ology – climatology. With it I’ll include meteorology and climate change, in fact anything to do with the weather.

But first, if you’re wondering what the photo is all about I’ll explain. This is the cover of a popular UK gay magazine. The gorgeous young man on the cover is, believe it or not, one the UK’s best known BBC television weather forecasters, Tomasz Schafenacker. No, he’s not gay (not that he’s admitting) and his appearance on the cover of “Attitude” magazine’s “Active” health supplement in January 2010 cause quite a stir in the British press and the BBC, even though he had pre-warned his employers, the Government’s Meteorological Office, about it. Whether this contributed to Tomasz being removed from tv forecasting later that year isn’t clear, but the press pointed out how inappropriately accident-prone he seemed to be. Tomasz once accidentally used the word “shite” instead of “site”, he called the Hebrides “nowheresville”, and gave the one finger gesture to a colleague on air believing the camera was turned off. So appearing topless on the cover and inside a gay magazine without informing the BBC can’t have helped. But I’m happy to report that the weather forecast has been butched up once again this summer with Tomasz’s return to the screens.

Back to the Ology of the Month. Meteorology is a very appropriate subject for the lgbt community to study because of that meteorological marvel we have taken as our emblem – the rainbow. A couple of articles this month will centre on rainbows, including a look at the most famous scientist to study them, Sir Isaac Newton.

The most notable use of the rainbow in lgbt culture is, of course, the Rainbow Pride flag. I wrote an article about the flag in June last year when I charted it’s origin and development. This month I’ll look at the rainbow itself and how it became an emblem in the lgbt community through several different routes.

Also this month I’ll be concluding my mini-series for Hispanic Heritage Month which began in the middle of September. I’ll also be listing notable people who have come out in the past year on National Coming Out Day.

There will be a bit of a gap between the first two Ology articles and the next because there’s a few articles that are associated with specific dates early in the month. As well as National Coming Out Day another date-related article will be an update (on the anniversary of his birth) on the progress to provide a fitting headstone for Simeon Solomon’s grave. This month’s full moon will also see the first of a new Star Gayzing mini-series.

Returning to the Ology later in the month I’ll look at the subject of climate change and the work of a gay astronomer, and the work of other climatologists and meteorologists.